I Just Discovered My Husband’s Affair

This is an ad for BetterHelp. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and we're all surrounded by non-stop noise and it keeps our bodies on high alert, but you don't have to carry it all alone. Go to betterhelp.com slash D'Aloni for 10% off. I had had this gut feeling for a while and so I'm not proud of it, but I put a recording, an audio recording device in our car and he goes to Mexico on the weekend. I just heard all of the phone calls and the dates and everything. What up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John D'Aloni show comedy from Nashville, Tennessee taking your calls on your mental and emotional health. On your marriages, your kids, your relationships, your dating, whatever you got going on in your world, pull up a seat and we'll figure out what's the next right move. If you're new beyond this show, I'd love to have you on. Click the link in the show notes and it will send you to Kelly and she is the overlord who decides with her scepter who gets in and who gets out. She controls the drawbridge. It's got the Phoenix, Arizona and talk to Evangeline. Hey, what's up Eve? How are we doing? Hi, I'm okay. How are you? Doing alright. Good. Things going okay? I found out on Monday that my husband has been cheating on me. Oh, so no. Not good. One week after our one year anniversary. Oh man. Yeah. How'd you find out? I had had this gut feeling for a while and I checked his phone and everything had been locked, which was not the previous situation. And so I'm not proud of it, but I put a recording, an audio recording device in our car. And he goes to Mexico on the weekends and yeah, I just heard all of the phone calls and the dates and everything. Sorry, I hate this for you. Yeah, thank you. How can I help? So, I am loyal to a fault. And when I confronted him with everything at first, he tried to downplay it and say, oh, we're just friends, but I heard very specific, like, I love you and pet names. And that's what hurt the most is that he was telling somebody else that he loved them. And he finally was just like, you're right, I messed up. He says, you know, like, I want to change and I want to make this better and I want it to work out. Can you ever forgive me? And it's just like, I'm a logical person and I just don't know if change is possible and how to, like, believe that and move forward. Do you feel like you have the whole truth? No. And I don't think I'll ever get it. Then you can't rebuild anything because it's got to be rebuilt on a foundation of safety and trust. And if you don't have that. Right. And I have a 16-year-old daughter. I don't want her to think that this is, you know, a normal way to handle this kind of situation. Well, there's not a normal way. There's the next right way. Right? Right. And so I think that I don't want you heard your 16-year-old to think getting treated like this is normal. Right? Because it's, I mean, yeah, it's not, I don't want her to think this is good. Let's take the word normal off the table. I don't want her to think this is good. I don't want her to look up and see, like, I don't want her to have a model for this. This is what relationships are supposed to feel like inside of a home. Right. Right? Yeah. I don't want my mom having to worry if she's contracting an STI every other weekend. Right. I don't want her to absorb seeing her stepdad flip over his phone every time somebody walks in their room. Yeah. Or his mom planting secret recording devices in the car. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I don't want her growing up in that. I don't want that for you. Yeah. Right. And that's the thing, like, I feel so embarrassed that that's what it came down to, but I knew I wouldn't get the truth. No, don't be embarrassed about what you thought you had to do and you got the information you needed. And so you didn't hire a private investigator. You became one. It is what it is. So I... I just feel really stuck in the way that, like, he apologizes and he makes it sound like so real, but I just can't... I can't trust it. I feel like after a year, if this is where we're already at... Did it happen before you got married? I think he's probably done it before. Before we got... I just didn't know. What makes you think that? Because I don't think you tell somebody that you love them. You know, just after a couple of dates or a couple of months. People say crazy things. You might not. Some people, other people might. Right. But he and I didn't say that to each other a couple of weeks after. You know, it took time, but we built a relationship and... How long have you all been together? Three years. And you have a 16-year-old daughter. Have you had your heart broken before? Oh, yeah. I was married for almost 20 years to her father. He was an alcoholic. And that was a painful divorce. I have a 21-year-old son as well. So how much of this is... Oh, bloody hell, here we go again. None of it, because I really... In my heart of hearts, I really love him. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying how much of you wanting to hang on to this thing? Or even entertain it? Here's what you're telling me. You're telling me, I'm pretty sure this has happened while we were dating. I've got it confirmed that just one year into the marriage, he's already leaving and having secret... Not only physical affairs, but his heart is with somebody else. And I'm not getting the full truth. I'll never get the full truth. So on that one side, you're telling me, this marriage is over. We might can build another one, but this thing doesn't exist. And in fact, if I look with clarity to the past, it's never existed. But there's another side of you that has been through the hell that is dividing up a family and moving and deposits and splitting like court call. Like you've been down that road too. And that's what I'm asking. How much of that experience of like, oh God, we have to do that again is clouding this situation? Probably like 50% because I'm terrified. And so I want you to be honest about if I choose to stay and I choose just to take his word for it, you're never going to have peace ever. You know that. I know that. And if you choose to stay because of how hard and complicated and heartbreaking it would be to leave, I want you to just own that. I'm going to choose the hell I know because of the hell that I don't know. And if somebody... I don't want to be, you know, I'm already 45. I don't want to be 55. Rebuilding my life again. I'd rather, you know, keep my peace and save myself all those years of heartache. Down the line. Yeah, I think that's right. Or if, I mean, yeah, if this... So let me go at this problem from another angle. 100%, I believe couples who experience infidelity can come back together and build something new. I wouldn't do this show if I didn't believe that. They can. They cannot if it doesn't start from a scorched earth honesty. And if the other person doesn't wake up for an extended season saying, I will own the bridge building that has to happen here. I imploded the trust. And so you hand me a map and I'll follow it. No Mexico for a year. Done. Easy. What's next? You know the passcode to my phone? Done. What's next? You want to pull credit report every two weeks to see if I have another phone line somewhere else? Done. Easy. What's that? Like, right? Yeah, he's right. He already won't let me look at his phone. Yeah. Then what he's telling you is you're stupid. I think you're dumb. And I don't care how you feel. Just trust me. And let me live my life. Yeah. And so I'll say this way. The day of reckoning will come one way or the other. I'm with you. If the day of reckoning is coming, I'd rather have it happen now. Right. So you have to get clear about what would be true. What must be true. For him to rebuild trust. And hand him that piece of paper. And then he gets to be a big boy and decide. He made big boy choices. So he gets to be a big boy and grow me in and make choices. I will not walk that path. Or I will walk that path. Yeah. And that's if you even want to stay. Yeah. But you don't need my permission to leave. You don't need my permission to stay. Yeah. I just want the clarity. I want somebody to talk through it like this and tell me it's okay. I'm not crazy. Yeah, you're not crazy. No. Yeah, I'm not crazy. No. It's not an unreasonable request to say, Hey, let me see your phone. If someone's sneaking off to Mexico for romantic rendezvous with someone they say, I love. No. Not crazy. Yeah. Because that's how he makes me feel. He says, I just want to be a victim and I want to stir the pot. And I'm like, this is literally like two days old. I don't want to stir the pot. I want to feel safe. Oh, geez. Yeah. This is another example of Gaslight 101. I'm going to go do whatever I want, whatever I want. I'm going to blame you for feeling weird about it or bad about it or for challenging me on it. Yeah. His response was, we've already talked about this. I apologized. How long are you going to make me pay for this? And I said, this is literally like two, this is, I told you on Saturday, today's Sunday. Here's the language. You blew up our home. You destroyed it. It's going to be a minute. Yeah. And if me talking about how much you hurt me and our daughter and how much you blew up our home. If that's such an affront to you, then I understand where you place me in the order of importance of your life. Yeah. I mean, the marriage I'll have doesn't exist. It's over. It's over. The question is, do you want to rebuild one with somebody who's just going to be dismissive of you, treat you like you're stupid and get mad at you 24 or 48 hours after he gets caught lying? Well, I mean, that's brazen, even for brazen folks. Wow. Yeah. I'm sorry. Sorry, evangelion. That's heartbreaking. I think it would be wise to call an attorney and figure out what the path looks like. And if you learned any lessons from your divorce from your first husband, make sure you put those down on paper in front of your attorney. I hate that you'll go through this again. I hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. I hate it. But you're worth more than this. Your daughter's worth more than this. This guy is worth more than this. What an absolute mess. Thanks for the call, sister. I'm so sorry. We'll be heartbroken with you. When we come back, a woman asks how to care for her mother without resentment after being forced to do wild things as a child. Everything. And I mean, everything feels like it's off the rails. I've spent my entire career working in chaotic situations and I've never seen anything like what's going on in our world today right now. I want to challenge you to stop consuming all of the news, all the chaos and stress and sports scores 24-7, 365. And I want you to consider spiritually grounding yourself in the morning and in the evening before you launch out into the madness and after you return from the madness. One of the ways I keep myself spiritually grounded in my faith is by using the Hallow app almost every single morning. Hallow is the number one Christian prayer meditation app in the world. The app has everything from scripture readings to music to meditations to lecture series, stories and more. Hallow is worth checking out as a way to start your day and as a way to end your day. Try Hallow for free for three months at Hallow.com slash Deloni and take back your soul, take back your sanity, take back your life. That's three months for free at Hallow.com slash Deloni. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and according to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than one in five U.S. adults suffer from mental illness every year. And nearly half of folks never get any kind of help and these aren't just statistics. These are your brothers and sisters and parents and kids. These are my family members and friends and neighbors. These are real people. These are you and me. And we're living in this nonstop noise, screens, comparisons, constant notifications world and our bodies are on high alert all the time. We're overwhelmed and lonely. It's so, so much. And this dress shows up in our relationships, our sleep and our health. We were never meant to carry all of this madness alone. Talking to somebody can help. I want you to talk to my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that matches you with a licensed therapist based on your goals and your preferences. Their therapists are fully licensed in the United States and they follow a strict code of conduct. You can message your therapist in schedule sessions right in the platform and if it's not the right fit, you can switch anytime at no additional cost. Cut through all the noise and stop carrying all of this alone. Go to BetterHelp.com slash Deloni to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com slash Deloni. All right, let's go out to Toronto, Ontario and talk to Jackie. Hey, Jackie, what's up? Hi, how are you today? I'm doing okay. How are you? I'm going to get super vulnerable in a minute and it scares me to death. So I'm awesome. Pretty awesome. Well, I am really honored that you called and I appreciate your willingness to be vulnerable. It's just you and me and a couple of million other people. That's it. Okay, so my current situation is I have an 88-year-old mom who had a stroke last year. It was one year after my dad passed, which left her unable to speak. So I take care of her. She lives in an assisted living place. So I go over every day at lunch and make sure she has things, take her shopping. We go to church together and do all those things. And I find myself feeling resentful because she didn't take care of my sister and I too well. When we were kids and my dad wanted to go to a nudist camp. So that time I was nine and my sister was 13 and we were told we have to keep this secret. We're not allowed to tell anybody where we go. I would watch my dad dawn one of my mom's wigs driving down the road to get there because he didn't want anyone to see us driving in there or assume it was them. And it wasn't until actually I had granddaughters that I thought, hang on, I would never do that to them. And that was a pretty vulnerable thing or place to put kids in. And I felt... It's abuse, huh? Yeah. That's, I mean, that is horrific abuse. That goes well, well beyond vulnerable. Forcing a nine-year-old and a 13-year-old to go spend time at a nudist camp. Yeah. Yeah. That's a grotesque abuse. And I'm heartbroken and sorry. Yeah. It makes sense why I do the things I do or I am the way I am now. Tell me about those things. Well, they used to, I questioned them once and said, why did you take us there? Like that, it was a pretty hedonistic kind of place. And she said, you had fun. You guys laughed, you played with the other kids, you always had fun. And then I thought afterwards, well, you were gaslighting me my whole life already. And it makes me feel incredible body shame to the point where I'm uncomfortable when I get out of the shower and I'm naked. I cover myself up right away. With intimacy, I've always got to have some clothing on me. And I'd like to not feel that way. And but I'm now, I think, well, I'm already 63 years old and but I still want to, I don't want to feel that way anymore. And I'm doing so much too. And I shouldn't because it's not the Christian thing to do to think, why am I killing myself every day running and helping you to the point of exhaustion? Because my sister moved far away. She can't be here to help. When you didn't have the simple courtesy to keep us safe. Okay, let me challenge you on a few things. Okay. Thing number one, I don't care how old you are, you're worth being unshackled from the abuse and the madness you experienced as a little girl. Okay, you're worth that. Are you married now? I am actually with a man and we are planning to get married. Gross. Is he awesome? Oh God, it's amazing. He tells me how beautiful I am all the time and never pushes me. It's awesome. Not for him. He'll benefit. But not for him. For you. I want you to make an appointment with the trauma therapist tomorrow. Okay. Okay. And I want you to call that trauma therapist and say you've grew up in an abusive, sexually abusive household. And you're ready once and for all to be free. Okay. Yeah. Be free. Because you're not. Shackles is a great word to use. That's exactly how I feel. Yeah. And here's the thing. You can't thank your way to this kind of freedom. It has to be experienced through your body with the help of somebody who knows what they're doing, who's trained and licensed and will walk with you. Okay. Okay. But I'll tell you there's profound freedom that you don't know exists on the other side. Okay. Okay. That's challenge number one. Here's challenge number two. There is nothing unchristian about being frustrated. There's nothing unchristian about thinking, why am I doing this? When not only did you not help us growing up, you put us in incredibly abusive situations, then you blame us for thinking it was unsafe and weird. Thank you for saying that. There's nothing unchristian about that. You're not a bad person. Okay. You're a human being. You're a human being. You're a human being. There are questions that in no way shape form or fashion at all in any way am I trying to make an excuse by what I'm about to say. Okay. Okay. I'm just trying to provide a context. All right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Who knows what hell your grandmother, I mean, your mother was living in. Oh, I know she was. She was incredibly submissive. Okay. And I would watch it and then I would call my dad out on it. And then I would be told to sit in my place and it's between the two of them. But I could see it's amazing you brought that up because when she stopped talking after her stroke and people asked her questions, she just shrugged her shoulders. And I thought, wow, that's exactly what you did when dad was alive. You just shrugged your shoulder and nodded yes. So I'm sure she went through hell as well. So maybe you have a great picture of what she grew up, I mean, what she lived in. Similar to her as a stroke victim. Yeah. Right. And here's why I tell you that. Not to excuse the way she's lied to you over the years, not to excuse the fact that she didn't throw you and your sister in a car and drive as far away from that man as possible. All those things. Right. I'm not trying to excuse that at all. Yeah. She has culpability and responsibility as an adult with children to protect her kids. And it was 50 years ago. Culture was different. Times were different. Police were like everything was different, right? Right. And so the question is less about tit for tat. Why didn't you do this? So should I do that? I want you to ask yourself this question. At 61 years of age, who do you want to be in the world? Because I think the care of your mother moving forward is going to say a lot more about you than it does about her. Yeah. I won't leave her. Okay. I'll see that all through and then I won't regret something else again. The way you just said that is really important. Okay. So don't lose this. I'm going to stop letting her drive. I get to choose from today forward who I am going to be in this world. Period. I'm a strong grown-ass woman that can do whatever I want to. And I'm not going to let her take away my dignity and my honor and my sense of responsibility as a woman who says I'm not going to leave my mom by herself. She didn't get that too. Right. Yeah. Right. And again, I'm putting words in your mouth if that's what you think and believe. I do believe that. I do. And I can't imagine being locked in her body right now and how frustrating it is. And she works at it and she tries and I mean after that the situation was done. She actually flourished a little bit after my dad died and started talking and telling me stories that I from her childhood, she actually had a voice and she got to speak. And I'm so sad that her voice got taken away. Can you all start a journaling thing together? Can she write? No, she can't write. She can't write anymore. I'm so good at 20 questions though. Like I'll take anyone on now. Like I've gotten very good at figuring out what she wants through our conversations. I also have an autistic granddaughter who doesn't speak. So sometimes I talk a lot in a day. But that girl was just showing me how to live my life. Honestly, she's my hero. That's awesome. And sometimes you don't need words. So I think the show's actions will speak louder. Yeah. So I don't want you, you can do what you want, okay? If I find myself in your situation. And then layer on, like if I find one of my parents, I find myself taking care of them. And I don't have the abuse layers you've got. But I would want to ask myself while looking in the mirror, who do I want to know myself to be? And I'm going to go do those things. Yeah. And it sounds like you're saying I'm a kind of person that's just going to get in there and get it done. Because when my mom passes, I'm going to remember myself as someone who honored a woman who didn't even bother to honor me when I was a little kid. Or you may find some stories or some diary entries somewhere or something. Maybe in her own best way possible as she could do without getting her head knocked off. She protected us the best she knew how to do in the situation she found herself. Yeah. In a time and a place when the only thing people cared less about kids was women. That would be great. I do see it in her eyes. And here's the thing. If you're not going to leave her, if you're not going to just stop going, this is going to sound nuts. So I'm about to tell you, okay? Okay. I would spend no more than 1.2 seconds a day being upset with her because you being upset with her doesn't change what you're about to do during the day. It can erase the past and it's not going to change her. All choosing anger, running the story back, the frustration that you never, why didn't you ever, all of that stuff. And it becomes a choice to be miserable doing the things you are already going to do today. So I'm not going to choose misery. I'm going to choose joy. So I'm going to celebrate myself and nobody's ever celebrated you except for this new knucklehead and I'm glad he's in your life. But I am going to celebrate. I'm going to put three or four things I'm grateful for about me. And that's not un-Christian. That is you honoring this person that you said God loves you. I'm going to honor that person. God thinks I'm worth being loved and then for crying out loud, I can love me too. That's hard. It's real hard. But I can do it. Yeah. It's real hard. I will work to that. And here's what trauma healing is going to do. You're not going to erase what happened. No. And there's probably things that you will uncover during this process that will be really heavy and overwhelming. Fair? Yeah. What it will allow you to do is when you step out of the shower, your body won't go into panic mode. It won't go into frantic grasping for the towel to cover up. It will you being able to be reckless and uninhibited with this new husband of yours who loves you like to the moon and back. He does and that would be a gift. But the gift of freedom will be for you. It will be a direct beneficiary of that gift, right? But the gift will be your body doesn't try to go to war and protect you every time it feels like you're exposed like you were when you were nine. That makes sense. I was trying to always figure out why do I feel the opposite of the thing that I did? Because your body put a GPS pin and people are looking at me. And the adults in the room are supposed to protect you from that moment and they didn't. They exposed you further. So the freedom that it was supposed to give turned into the shackles later in life. There is no freedom for a nine-year-old at a nudist colony. I mean that in and of itself, that's just insanity. It's madness. It's terrifying. Yeah, I mean, I don't even have words for that. But yeah, your body's been trying to protect you for the last 50 years. Because there were no adults in your life that were going to protect you as they should. So your body said, all right, I'm the only one. I wish you nothing but healing and freedom and just a real freedom. I'm the only one. I wish you nothing but healing and freedom and just a reckless fun. Fun. You need fun. Life with this man that's come into your world. And I just wish you guys the absolute best. Thank you so, so much for the call. All right, when we come back, a man asks how to support his wife through her severe depression and anxiety. We'll be right back. I love doing this show because I get to talk to so many amazing people from all over the world. Y'all are building new routines, setting new relationship boundaries, showing up in your lives, trying to create non-anxious worlds. 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But it started off really small, you know, kind of early on in our marriage that my wife's anxiety especially kind of started like ticking up. Like her depression started ticking up. And we would, you know, like she'd do like therapy. She'd, you know, later started with a psychiatrist and going through those. But just over the years, it just has has ramped up, has ramped up, has ramped up. We'd have, you know, high risk pregnancies and postpartum was just a whopper for her. And then it never went away. It was just that became the new normal as far as the depression and everything that it brought. And yeah, it's just, for me, just looking on, I just feel so powerless with so much of it. That, you know, like I, there's so few times now it has been like almost five years that depression has gone to the point where it's a, it's, I don't know what I can say, but, you know, self harm and things start to come into play. And she, she, she, she's suicidal. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so. Actively. Yeah. Okay. Like a week ago, I, like I walked in on her with, with my, my kid right before we put her to bed, put him to bed. And it was probably seconds before she was going to try. And it was just half, it just happened that we walked in. And, and we, you know, we took her to crisis center, like we did everything. She's getting treatment. She, we're doing everything, but yeah, it just feels like I'm just along for the ride. Yeah. And that despite how much I love and encourage, it's nothing I can do. Yeah. And so this is not an apples to apples comparison. Okay. But I want you to use this as an analogy. All right. If she had contracted stomach cancer, you would have that same feeling of powerlessness. Like I can't do anything. I can take you to the doctor. I can't, I can't heal you from this, what you have in your guts. But it would be minus the shame. It would be minus that you look in the mirror and saying, why can't I love you so that you feel less anxious? Why can't I love you enough so that you feel less depressed? And that's the part I want you to let go in this season. Okay. Because it's not about you not loving her well. It's not about you loving her with all the skills you got, all the tools you got in your toolkit. It's about her being sick. She's not well right now. No. Okay. And so the powerlessness is real. The sense that this is always going to be this way. And is this the marriage I'm going to have for the rest of my life? And then the guilt you feel by even asking that question or thinking that question. I want you to set that kind of stuff down right now. Okay. Okay. It's like, if you were to come see me privately, if you were to, if you were a friend of mine, I would suggest she needs inpatient treatment right away. And I know that that's almost impossible logistically with two young kids. You're probably working a full-time job. It's chaos. It's whatever. And she's a hellish price to pay in the short term for the potential of real long-term healing in your home and in her heart and mind spirit. Okay. Yeah. But that's where I think we are. This is beyond pharmacology at this point. This is going to take a whole system of support. Yeah, I think so. And it's because it's the, because like your analogy, like if it was, you know, heaven forbid anyone, you know, cancer or car, you know, some kind of, you know, other physical injury or things like, there's a wound, you know, there's a scar. There's literally, you know, there's, there's a cancer in you and they can watch it and they can track it and they can treat it. But this is, with it being mental, it just is so hard because she can have good days. Like in her good days aren't great. It's been so many years. I think she's, I honestly believe she's forgotten what it's like to not feel hopeless and depressed. Sure. Like to think, if I ask her like, what do you have planned today? She's not able to answer that. Yeah. She just, like, I'm just, I'm just going like I'm, I'm not planning on anything in the future because she, the depression like it, it's causing her not to, to really see it or see yourself there. And but with, with the mental, she can have like that traumatic, traumatic night we had where I had to take her to crisis center and everything, you know, and they had her overnight. The next day they discharged her. And for all intents and purposes, life went back to normal. She was back home. She like, we went back to our normal habits, you know, obviously I had, you know, precautions and medications and things, but for me, it's, it felt like, like waking up from a bad dream. Right. But instead of saying like, oh wow, that was a bad dream. I'm glad it's over. It's like, no, the entire world, like everything's gone back to normal, but I experienced this thing. She did and it's nothing is like also never happened. Nothing is normal. Okay. You're not crazy. Yeah. You're not crazy. Nothing is normal. Everything's different now. Okay. Yeah. Can I be real blunt with you? Yeah, please. You walked in on your wife about to take her life or attempt to take her life to die by suicide in front of your young child. There's zero normal about that. Yeah. She's very, very sick. Okay. And you're not crazy for being frustrated with the mental health support systems we have in this country. You're not crazy for being super front. You're just sitting here back home. Yep. Yeah. You're not crazy that she is trying to play, perform the role of normal mom and wife to the best of her abilities. And you kind of thinking, like, what are, what are we doing? We're just going right back to, we're just going to pretend like that didn't happen. Yeah. You're not crazy. Okay. Thank you. The boldness you need here is to remind her to tell her to say, I love you enough. I love our kids enough that I want us to hit pause on this charade role playing. And the best way I can love you right now is to support you getting well and the needs you have to get well, exceed what anyone in this home can do. And so I've made arrangements for you to go visit somebody or to go do inpatient for 30 or 60 days where you can rest, you can sleep, and you can get a glimpse of what it looks like to hope again. What it looks like to feel good again. Right? Yeah. And your understanding of major depression is more accurate than most. She doesn't have a picture of the future with her in it. She doesn't have a lived feeling or lived experience of what it feels like to feel good. And so there's nothing to aim for. Right? Like if I blew my knee out tomorrow, I would have a memory of what it felt like to walk and go jogging with no pain. I would be looking forward to getting to that back. That doesn't exist for her. Yeah. And now we have somebody who's actively trying to hurt herself. Or really what she's trying to do is to stop all this hurt. An inpatient is insanely expensive. Yeah. I don't know how you'll navigate childcare. I don't know how you'll navigate. I don't know how you'll do any of that stuff. You have to call in every friend in favor and community member and family member you got. But this is where we're at in your home. And this is what I would tell my wife. I would tell my sister. I would tell my daughter. I would tell my son. I would tell my friends. The exact same thing. This one's too big. Okay. Yeah. And I think what I don't want you to do is to fall prey to this black cloud and you lose hope too. Yeah. And can I tell you something crazy? Yeah. I've come to believe hope is an action. It's not a feeling. Yeah. It's an orientation. I'm going to keep doing the next right thing because I believe in my guts it gets better. Especially when I don't feel like it. I'm going to make sure I exercise. I'm going to make sure that I call in every helping person professional I can to support and love my wife. I'm going to call my neighbors and ask for help getting kids to school and back and stuff like that. I'm going to ask my local church for help with free childcare because I don't have any more money. We're going to ask everybody for everything. I'm going to reach out. By the way, you'll be honoring other people too by asking them. I'm going to believe in them purpose and meaning, which is in short supply these days. Okay. Yeah. No, thank you. I'm sorry this has happened to me and to her, to you, to your kids, to everybody. It's one of those funny hindsight is 2020 that looking back, it's like, oh, if we would have done this differently, maybe if I pushed a little more to have her see medical professionals earlier on years ago, but leaving it up to her, like, hey, make an appointment. She said she would. But if I had only like pushed more, this or that, and I don't know if it would have moved the needle at all, but it's just such a... Here's the thing. I hate to say it like this. This is pretty abrupt. Doesn't matter. Yeah. Doesn't matter. Yeah. This is you cruising on the highway at 75 miles an hour trying to drive by looking at your rear view mirror. It's unhelpful. The only thing that that story has been written, there's a period at the end of that story. The only story you can impact is the one you write next. So if you imagine yourself holding a pen, what is that story going to be? I loved my wife enough to wade in through her pain and her hurt and say, we're going to impatient. I got over my concerns with asking people for help and frustration and I started asking everybody. Right? Yeah. I had to go sit down with my boss and say, I need to alter my schedule. I need... Like, I don't know what you do for a living, but I... What I'm saying is I started taking every route possible. That's what the next right thing looks like for you. But it starts with her going to get inpatient treatment. For major depression and for a whole host of things. And there, hopefully, they will give her medical diagnostics, physiological diagnostics, hormone testing, as well as psychiatric pharmacology. They should take care of her and then begin working on life overwhelm skills. And then, y'all, we'll begin to reunite and say, okay, how do we build a brand new marriage together where I'm a part of loving you and honoring you well and you for me because she needs a role too. I've seen these situations that go really well. Someone goes and gets the help they need to come out with a whole new perspective on life. And then they rebuild something amazing and cool. And this becomes an extraordinary story to tell your great grandkids one day. I also can tell you, if you want to talk about living in the rearview mirror, if something does happen in the interim, it's going to be a weight that you carry that's... I wouldn't wish on anybody. So make the calls that you need to make. And let's get her in somewhere ASAP. Thank you for being a husband who loves his wife well, especially when she's hurting, and especially when it's hard. You're a good man, my brother. We'll be right back. I love how comfortable these glasses are, how low their prices are, and their amazing Shady Ray's Lost or Broken Replacement program. I love Shady Ray sunglasses. I got multiple pairs, and I even got pairs for my wife and my kids. I want my whole family looking and feeling super cool this summer. I run in my Shady Ray's, I do yard work in them, I drive in them, and I go fishing in them. The ones I have are polarized, so they cut the glare on the water and they make it easier to see no matter where I am in the bright sun. As you're heading into summer, go be the coolest version of yourself. Head to ShadyRays.com and check out their Memorial Day Sale. Get up to a 50% off two pairs of sunglasses with Code Deloni. That's ShadyRays.com Code Deloni. All right, we're back. What up, Kelly? All right, so this is a question that comes from our Together app. These are questions that we have gotten from people that are using the app. But I think this one also is kind of bigger than just the app as well. Explain mental load and what that is, what's its impact. As a guy in the United States, mental load is a bunch of bullcrap. Is this kind of like saying gaslighting doesn't exist? Yeah, there's no gaslighting. Mental load is a bunch of bullcrap. No, I'm just kidding. Mental load is a phenomenon that... It's not a phenomenon. That was such a stupid way to say that. It is everything that a spouse is carrying, a person is carrying in the background of the day-to-day responsibilities of their life. Here's what I mean. My wife wakes up, the kids have to eat. They have to get to school on time. They go to two different schools. They have two different start times. But this day, one kid has off, but this kid has a late start. And so that means we have to drop them off one off here. And then I got to make arrangements to pick this other kid up because one's got a soccer game, one's got a track meet. And in the background, there's also mother-in-law's coming next weekend. John's mom's birthday is coming up. I'm going to make sure the cards get sent out. And also, I think his sister texted and said this. And also, there's doctor's appointments and there's the orthodontist appointment. But I think one kid has getting the braces off in the next one. That's mental load. It's all the stuff that one person is carrying all the time. In addition to, I got to get to work. I got to get home. Dinner's got to get made. The yard's got to get mowed. It's all the stuff that has to happen in life. Where I've seen mental load a lot over the last several years, especially, is it's been couched as a totally gendered thing. Women have this crazy mental load that men don't have. And I posit that it's men do have a significant mental load. It's just different. And so, when my wife, I remember us sitting down and talking about all this stuff, and there was two big components to mental load. Mental load number one is it never occurred to her that I'm walking around all the time, closely watching retirement accounts, watching the state of how our city is doing, what's going to happen if this happens, where is this going to be? Are we going to be okay here? Hey, there's a guy following us too close over here in this restaurant. Like, when I explained to her me walking into a restaurant with the family, she was stunned. She's like, literally, you have two exits for every time we walk into a restaurant and you scan the room for any... And I said, yeah, every single time. Like, she didn't know I did that. She thought I was kind of ridiculous. And I laughed and said, well, I think it's kind of ridiculous that you're in your head, you're carrying around six months from now with the Donuts Deployments. And so, I said, both of us are carrying stuff that the other person doesn't understand, but we're carrying levels of importance now and in some imaginary future. And so, the second part of this that was hard is I said, why don't you just write down all the school start times, all the doctors, all their phone numbers and stuff like that that you're carrying, and we'll tape it somewhere in multiple places in the house, and I'll take a picture of it. And I'll always have it on my phone. And there was a strange sense, she smiled and she's like, but then what will I carry? And so, it was this also this sense of identity, like I'm the one that keeps all this together. And if I was to say, hey, will you look at these retirement accounts with me once a month, I would feel like, well, I mean, that's kind of my job. My job is the one to get dramatic and come up with future scenarios that are never going to happen and try to solve them in the present. That's what I do. And so, mental load is for couples, I think it's important that everybody take regular times. And the Together app is wired into this. If there's one thing that's the most important part of the Together app is the weekly rundown. What does this week look like coming up financially, calendar wise, we're going to put sex on the calendar, like what is happening this week, and where do we put what we're carrying, what's the mental load? Can I help with cards for birthdays? Can we text this year instead of writing handmade cards? Are there flights that we need to buy? Are there doctor appointments I need to draw? Like, let's put all that stuff out of our heads and on paper and we'll share it together and then we'll divide and conquer. And it's not getting any identity about, look what I'm carrying versus what you're carrying. And also it's being honest about, hey, these things got to get done and both people need to hop in there and get it done. Man, you're talking about freeing your whole life. It's amazing. Once my wife and I started sharing mental load stuff, it's been transformative. We both walk lighter. We don't have less crap to do, but I can pick up the slack more. She doesn't feel obligated to carry all the stuff and I'm sure not carrying as much of this existential garbage I always carry around. So does the app walk you through that? Yes, like it walks you through the weekly rundown, which is a weekly thing that everybody should do in your marriage. And it gives you prompts at different stages, different activities to talk about mental load today. Let's discuss this thing. Let's have this conversation about this piece of things. So yeah, it's perfect for that. Awesome. You don't have any mental load, do you? No, no, none whatsoever. Here we go. Dialing up the drama, it's Kelly. A little bit. Just, you know, see, don't go there. I can't get there. It's 400 years ago. Love you. Bye.